FATOBA, NIGERIAN SCHIPHOL FIRE VICTIM: The whole room there was filled up
with smoke. We pressed the intercom - nobody came.
Fatoba is a Nigerian man who was locked in the cell block where the
fire broke out. He and his cellmate screamed for help for at least 15
minutes with no response.

FATOBA: The door is a metal
door. If you bang very hard on the door, you might have injury, so my
friend now, he start banging the door, shouting for help. Nobody came.

Two female guards finally raised the alarm, but it was another 15
minutes before help arrived. The source of the fire, which appeared to
be deliberately lit, was in cell number 11, and when prison guards
finally got there, they rushed to open it first.

AHMED POURI: They open the cell number 11, and they save this man. He
was the only man, he was along in the cell. The rest in every cell are
two prisoners.

Ahmed Pouri says what followed was an inept response which further
compounded the tragedy.

AHMED POURI: If they open this door, then it is normal to open the door
of cell number 10, and 9 and 12, 13 and so on, because fire was here.
Here was the dangerous area, but the reason is not clear for nobody up
to now, why they begin from absolutely wrong side?
So they begin
from cell number one to open the cell doors, and also from this side
from number 26 so they can save the people until here.

Pouri says testimony given by an Afghan inmate - the last prisoner to
be released from his cell - proves the guards knew there were people
still trapped inside.

AHMED POURI: When he arrived
here, he said "I heard from the guards." "They said, 'Now we will close
the whole section, and nobody are allowed to go inside.'" He said, "No,
there are five cells that are closed, and I saw many of them are alive.
We can't let them to burn in the fire."

AGOURI, FIRE SURVIVOR: Some people of the guards, they was laughing.

REPORTER: They were laughing on this night?

AGOURI: Yeah, they don't care.

Agouri - a young Libyan man - was one of those who survived the blaze.
He'd been located in cell number one, with a Ukrainian man called
Taras. When he realised that Taras hadn't made it outside, he protested
to the guards.

AGOURI: I told them, "Let me... I go back."

REPORTER: You wanted to go back to get him?

AGOURI: Yeah.

REPORTER: And what happened?

AGOURI: They stop me, and I said that to the policemen, when they made
interview with me. I said that to the policeman, 'cause that's the
truth, it's what happened. Ask to them, the man is still inside.

The following day the body of Agouri's Ukrainian cellmate was
discovered. It was on the floor next to the main exit door that the
guards had sealed shut. His name was Taras Bilyk, and he was 29 years
old.

GALINA BILYK, SISTER OF FIRE VICTIM
(Translation): When I came to the morgue I saw that he was so small. He
was so small. The coffin was very big and he was so small.

Dateline tracked down Taras's family in the Ukraine. According to his
sister, Galina, when she first saw her brother's body weeks later in an
Amsterdam morgue, he looked like he'd been beaten.

GALINA BILYK (Translation): You can clearly see that bruise, and here
on his eyebrowâ€¦.And there is a big dent here as if he took a really bad
fall and got a dent that bled.

Nine months after the
tragedy, Taras's family have many questions about their brother's
death. And while they acknowledge that he may have broken the rules,
they believe his imprisonment and his death was preventable.

GALINA BILYK (Translation): Those people could have survived. They
weren't criminals. Why lock them up? They could have.. Alright, perhaps
there's a law that demands they be isolated. But why lock them up like
criminals? I don't understand.

Taras came from Lvov,
an old sprawling city in western Ukraine near the Polish border. It's a
pretty place, but with high unemployment and a stagnant economy, life
remains tough for most. And it was for those reasons Taras made his way
to the Netherlands, where he worked illegally for more than a year.

GALINA BILYK (Translation): I don't believe he did that country any
harm at all. He was working honestly, earning his living. He needed the
money he earned to help his family in Ukraine, and also to, sort of...
organise his own life in a basic kind of way. People do make wrong
choices. It can happen to anyone. But firstly, I repeat, Why? Why
imprison people who just broke regulations?

Every morning, Galina and her mother walk
to their local church to remember Taras. But their daily routine at the
church isn't just about offering prayers for his soul - they're also
praying that justice will be served.